Astérion, n°33/2025

Before evaluating popular thought – whether positively or negatively – Gramsci stresses in his Prison Notebooks the need to forge the right analytical tools and relevant concepts to describe popular thought and, eventually, to criticise it. However, the concepts that, for Gramsci, may be viewed as different avatars of popular thought (common sense, ideology, religion, and folklore) are characterised by profound ambiguities from which the Italian philosopher's intellectual work unfolds. This conceptual effort is aimed at avoiding the two pitfalls of miserabilism and populism, offering useful tools for anyone striving to better understand popular thought – even today. Gramsci’s Marxism requires him, both as a theorist and a political leader, to remain closely attentive to the complexity of social reality. He consistently emphasises the dialectical relationship between the Party’s cultural work and the popular worldviews at any given time.